We Don’t Get No Respect

In a recent speech, columnist George Will described Washington, D.C., as “an
enclave surrounded on four sides by reality.” One could say the same thing
of many of the offices of the mainline churches.

In March, the Washington-based Aspen Institute hosted a two-day symposium
on the public policy witness of mainline Protestant churches. But hardly anyone
at the conference fully recognized an obvious problem for mainline church lobby
offices in the nation’s capital: Their left-leaning staffs do not speak
for most mainline church members.

Instead, speakers such as Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University lamented
that journalists ignore mainline pronouncements because they are “boring”
and not as “interesting” as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.

Wuthnow did not give the mainline churches enough credit. They do indeed provide
spokesmen as colorful and ideological as Falwell or Robertson. But unlike the
televangelists, liberal mainline leaders are not able to politically influence
a significant segment of their own constituency. Like political fossils from
a distant past, the mainline lobby offices are little more relevant to the US
political scene than the US Socialist Workers Party or the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union.

Wuthnow and other speakers lamented the “quiet” nature of mainline
lobbying. In fact, mainline church lobbies are hardly quiet. Like the religious
right, these church offices frequently publish news releases and participate
in press conferences involving controversial and timely issues.

Unappreciated Progressivism

The conference speakers also noted how mainline churches are unappreciated
for their “progressive” political stances. A review of some recent
mainline rumblings makes this lack of appreciation quite understandable:

• Mainline leaders renewed their campaign to ban land mines through
an international treaty that the United States has refused to sign. “This
treaty has slowed the carnage and begun the long process of healing lands broken
by land mines,” said Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council
of Churches (NCC), speaking at a Capitol Hill rally in March. His council is
launching an effort to persuade every church, mosque, and temple to support
the treaty. Edgar’s church council has been joined by the US Catholic
Conference, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, and numerous other denominations in demanding quick
US ratification of the treaty.

• Heated opposition to the appointment of John Ashcroft (a Pentecostal)
as US Attorney General in February emerged from, among other places, the Interfaith
Alliance, led largely by liberal mainline Protestants. At a press conference
in Washington, the Alliance offered a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, a Sikh, and two
liberal Baptists to warn of the impending threat to their freedoms supposedly
posed by Ashcroft.

• In a news release, and in a special announcement at its February
board meeting, the NCC trumpeted the use of its Peters Projection Map on NBC-TV’s
popular political drama West Wing in a February episode. The Peters
Projection Map was produced with the support of the United Nations and is distributed
by the NCC’s publishing house. Unlike most traditional maps, it de-emphasizes
Europe and North America while emphasizing Africa. According to the NCC, the
Peters map is “more fair to all peoples” who apparently have been
marginalized by other maps.

• A new booklet published by the United Methodist General Board
of Global Ministries (GBGM) endorses abortion rights and praises socialist systems
for providing better health care to their people. Called Abundant Living: Global
Health and Christian Response-Ability, the booklet endorses the full availability
of legal and ostensibly safe abortions. “Accessible legal abortion services
could drastically reduce deaths from unsafe abortions, especially for the poor,”
it says. The booklet claims that readily available abortion services are essential
for defending women and elevating their status.

The booklet also urges readers to work through United Methodist Women to lobby
Congress for socialized medicine. One example of a health-care system that works
is Cuba’s, according to the booklet. Cuba’s health-care system has
advanced “remarkably.” The booklet claims that Cuba’s “level
of health, education and overall social welfare is superior to any country in
the developing world, and is in many ways very similar to that of the developed
world.”

• At their first meeting since President George W. Bush’s
election, the bishops of the United Methodist Church sharply rebuked Bush’s
new initiative to deploy an anti-missile defense system, demanded that the US
Navy abandon its munitions testing base in Puerto Rico, insisted that the US
military cease its “war games” in Korea, urged reduced US support
for Israel, and passed a resolution about Labor Day that expressed “solidarity
with workers.”

The Methodist bishops’ statements, although addressing timely issues
and directed to a President who belongs to their denomination, seem not to have
received mention in a single major newspaper or wire service. The only coverage
came from the church’s own official news service.

Disconnected & Ignored

Mainliners are ignored because reporters instinctively understand that mainline
church officials rarely command and direct the political and social opinions
of their constituencies. Voting patterns and polls show this, but most reporters
can figure that out even without the data.

In short, the mainline church offices do not represent the church members
for whom they are supposed to work. The Aspen conference, called “The
Public Role of Mainline Protestantism,” was unable to admit this and consequently
provided more cheerleading than impartial analysis on the political lobbying
of mainline churches.

The Aspen event failed even to fully admit that these offices are controversial
within their own denominations. It did acknowledge that many and probably most
church members are not aware that these offices exist.

Although he believes that most clergy still support their Washington lobby
offices, Wuthnow said that denominational funding for those offices continues
to shrink. When asked about the possibility of lack of support within the mainline
churches for the Washington lobby efforts, Wuthnow responded that the disagreement
is “real” but “limited to a few issues,” such as abortion
and homosexuality. The “general principles” behind most of the mainline
political lobbying on issues of race, peace, and the environment command “widespread
agreement” in the churches, he claimed.

James Wind, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and president of the Alban Institute,
blamed the limited effectiveness of the mainline lobby offices on being “spread
too thin” on a wide variety of issues.

Wind noted that mainline denominations, because they are committed to ecumenical
cooperation, have blurred their distinct identities. He also admitted that “political
ventures” were never the “preferred style” of most mainline
church members. Direct political action was more appealing to mainline leaders
and clergy.

The whole concept of the “mainline” church may be irrelevant,
Wind surmised, because it is based on a “dysfunctional” and “anti-democratic”
elitism. He called Evangelicals the “successful innovators” who
could be transforming the nation’s political alignment. “Keep your
eyes on the Evangelicals,” he concluded.

No Longer in Control

Laura Olson of Clemson University in South Carolina admitted that the mainline
church lobby offices are “largely liberal” and devoted to “peace
and justice issues.” She also reported that the D.C. offices and other
denominational leaders are telling their denominations, especially the clergy,
what the public policy stances ought to be, rather than vice versa. Still, Olson
claimed that the church lobby offices command widespread support among their
clergy.

Her evidence was scant. Olson conducted a survey of 62 clergy from mainline
denominations. Many of these clergy’s names were given to her by the church
lobby offices. All but one of the clergy whom she interviewed were consequently
supportive of the lobby offices.

Elenora Ivory Giddings, who heads the Washington lobby office of the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.), said she receives requests for information from only one or
two churches in her denomination per week. But she said they always affirm her
work and insist that they do not believe the “negative information we
hear about you.”

Giddings said she relies more on laity than clergy to politically advocate
the issues chosen by her office and the denomination. “Some of us would
like pastors to preach public policy sermons every Sunday,” she said,
but that is unlikely. Many pastors preach only a “personal Gospel”
and stay away from the “Social Gospel,” she complained. Another
problem is that many church members believe public policy issues are not “appropriate”
for worship services.

Tom Hart, who heads the Episcopal Church’s Washington office, cited
the Jubilee 2000 campaign to eradicate Third-World debt to Western banks as
an example of successful lobbying by mainline churches. The campaign resulted
in the United States’ canceling over $400 million in debt.

Unlike other mainline lobby offices, the Episcopal Washington office focuses
on just one central issue a year, Hart said. This, in part, explained its success
with the Jubilee campaign. He also stressed the importance of reaching out to
Republicans. He explained that “we’re not in control of Congress.”
Then he smilingly admitted, “My partisanship is showing.” Hart is
a former Democratic congressional staffer.

“Our agenda is fairly progressive,” Hart added. But he said, “Republicans
don’t have a monopoly on religion.” He urged mainliners to use the
“language of faith” when advocating their public policy positions.
Hart mentioned that he had successfully sought Pat Robertson’s endorsement
of the Jubilee campaign’s goals, helping to create a coalition that was
not limited to mainliners or liberal Democrats.

Mainline church lobby offices all suffer from a frequent inability to gain
media attention, limited legislative successes, reduced funding from their denominations,
and polls showing lack of support from their own church constituencies. All
of these factors point to a doubtful future for these church lobby offices.
But Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow still enthused about them: “There’s
reason to be happy with what mainline churches have been doing.”

The Aspen event was as fatally flawed as the mainline lobby efforts it sought
to analyze. Like the mainline churches’ Washington offices themselves,
this conference chose self-deception over reality. Indeed, if mainline leaders
speak and nobody listens, can they really be said to have made a statement?

“We Don’t Get No Respect” first appeared in the July/August 2001 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

Letters Welcome: One of the reasons Touchstone exists is to encourage conversation among Christians, so we welcome letters responding to articles or raising matters of interest to our readers. However, because the space is limited, please keep your letters under 400 words. All letters may be edited for space and clarity when necessary. letters@touchstonemag.com